Existing media systems use a media asset identifier to identify each media program. However, different media recordings having different media asset identifiers can correspond to the same media program. For example, an episode of “Big Bang Theory” may be recorded from the NBC channel, and assigned with one identifier and the same episode of “Big Bang Theory” may be recorded from the SHOWTIME channel and assigned a different identifier. When the existing media system, such as a personal recorder, uses the media asset identifiers to arrange and sort the recorded media programs, the duplicate copy of the same recorded episode may not be identified and thus wastes storage space on the digital video recorder (DVR).